Amy Poehler profile for “Shrek the Third”
As a child, Amy Poehler loved fairy tales, though she identified more than with the hero on a white horse than the damsel in distress. “It’s funny, but when I think about fairy tales, I only remember wanting to play the boy parts, not the girl parts,” Poehler said during a telephone interview from Los Angeles to promote the computer-animated “Shrek the Third,” which opens May 18 and features her as the voice of Snow White. “I liked Cinderella and Snow White, but what I really liked was the action of doing things like riding on horses and saving people.
“That’s what the boys got to do.”
Poehler, however, identified with Snow White’s personality in “Shrek the Third.”
“What attracted me to (doing the voice of) Snow White was that she had a lot on her plate, including seven guys to take care of,” said Poehler, who’s best known as a regular on NBC’s “Saturday Night Live.” “She’s a Type-A personality.
“And in this film, she plays against the (classic) demure Snow White.”
Poehler joined “SNL” six years ago and still enjoys appearing on the pressure-filled live broadcast because it never gets stale.
“The show always transforms and evolves,” she said. “It almost regenerates itself, and it remains a water-cooler show that people talk about at work.
“I give credit to (creator) Lorne Michaels for that (topical aspect). He’s the captain of the show and always keeps it changing.”
Poehler is perhaps best known on “SNL” for co-anchoring “Weekend Update” with Seth Meyers. The segment comes together just before the show airs.
“We wait until the last minute (to lock in the “Weekend Update” script), because we don’t want to miss anything,” the 35-year-old performer said. “We have three or four staff writers who only do ‘Update’ jokes and they’re writing right up until the broadcast.”
Poehler has certainly become one of the shining stars on “SNL.”
The sketch comic began her career with the Upright Citizens Brigade, an improv troupe in Chicago. When the group relocated to New York City, it landed a sketch show on Comedy Central for three seasons, and Poehler served as a performer and writer.
She moved from there to “SNL” and expanded her career with appearances in films such as “Mean Girls” with Tina Fey (her former “Weekend Update” co-anchor), “Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny” with Jack Black, “Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo” with Rob Schneider and “Envy” with Ben Stiller.
Poehler currently co-stars with former “SNL” favorite Will Ferrell and her husband, comic actor Will Arnett (TV’s “Arrested Development”), in the spring smash “Blades of Glory,” a figure-skating spoof that has grossed $111.7 million and is still going strong.
She felt from the beginning that the PG-13 comedy would be a hit.
“You’ve got Will Ferrell starring, and he has a good track record,” Poehler said. “And there are a lot of funny gags, so I’m not surprised by how well it did.”
In “Blades of Glory,” Poehler and Arnett play a brother-and-sister skating team who will use any deceitful means necessary to win gold medals.
“We had a blast,” Poehler said of the experience of co-starring with her husband. “We had to do a lot of physical stuff (on the ice), and I even had to learn how to skate, though my husband had been skating for years.
“We were allowed to do a lot of improvising on ‘Blades of Glory,’ which we did once we had the technical aspects of the skating moves completed.”
Poehler is busier than ever with big-screen comedies. She will star opposite Billy Bob Thornton, Susan Sarandon and Seann William Scott in “Mr. Woodcock,” will join Parker Posey in “Spring Breakdown,” and will team again with Tina Fey in “Baby Mama” (playing a surrogate mother for a work-obsessed professional woman).
With the war in Iraq, global warming and other international problems, people seem stressed, and Poehler thinks humor may help to make them feel better.
“It’s different doing comedy right now, but I’m not sure whether it’s easier or harder,” she said. “I started on ‘SNL’ two weeks after 9/11, and at that time, people said comedy was over and people wouldn’t want to smile again.
“The political and cultural landscape is reflected by the show, whether we’re making jokes about politicians or celebrities. People will always need to laugh.”